


Except What Happens at Night

by the_rck



Category: The Pretender (TV)
Genre: F/M, Post "Island of the Haunted"
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-08
Updated: 2018-01-08
Packaged: 2019-03-01 23:37:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 800
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13305747
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_rck/pseuds/the_rck
Summary: The first time was after her father died.





	Except What Happens at Night

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Highlander_II](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Highlander_II/gifts).



> Title from Maureen N. McLane's “As I was saying, the sun.”

The first time was after her father died. 

Jarod was waiting in her hotel room when she came out of the shower with a towel on her head and an indifferently tied robe covering her body. He sat at the room's desk but had turned the chair toward the bathroom, so that the desk lay on his right.

Miss Parker's gun, no longer holstered, lay on the desk inches from Jarod's hand. Her eyes fixed on that for about a second and a half, and he didn't try to hurry her.

"I thought the discussion would be more polite if that--" He indicated the gun with the merest twitch of a finger. "--was mine."

She studied him through narrowed eyes. She was almost certain he'd removed the bullets, and she was almost certain he'd run if she screamed or even just told him to go. "What the hell do you want?"

He didn't move at all. "To talk. Maybe something else. Maybe not." He smiled, and she recognized it as Jarod with the winning move. It wasn't quite the same as Jarod springing a trap. She knew that one, too, but this was friendlier.

Potentially, at least, but only if she was willing to accept that he'd won.

"I've learned a lot," he said. "Things you probably already knew."

She met his eyes and let her expression tell him that she would break his arm if she had to. She could. She thought they both knew that. She glanced sideways at the unopened bottle of Jack Daniels sitting on the bedside table. She very badly wanted a drink, but she wasn't fool enough to--

"If I ever drug you," Jarod said, "you won't even know I was there, not until after."

She nodded. "You have the glasses." She pointed to the two paper covered tumblers sitting on the desk. "Assuming you want to share." She took a moment to retie her robe and to remove the towel that held her hair. She tossed the latter toward the bathroom door.

His answering smile was deeper and somehow darker than she expected.

"Don't do that!" she snapped at him. "I have some sense of self-preservation." She went just close enough that he could toss her the glasses without too much risk that she'd fumble the catch. She set the first one on the bed. When she caught the second, she seriously considered shattering it so that she'd have a weapon.

She and Jarod exchanged a look with each admitting that she could if she chose and that it would mean he'd leave. She set the second glass on the bed, too.

Neither of them had more than two fingers of alcohol, but Miss Parker realized later that she hadn't been the only one who considered trying to get the other to drink more.

"So what do you want?" she asked him again once the alcohol had given her a little insulation. "Old friends' reunions don't seem like you." At least, she thought, not with her. "Or are you hoping I'll strip and give you a show?"

He laughed, and like his earlier smile, it was darker than she expected. When he spoke, she couldn't pretend not to hear the bitterness threaded through the words. "It's not as if there's anything else for us. Everything either of us have belongs to someone else. I steal. You rent."

Untangling that took her a few seconds. She knew he was right. Her rent was silence and obedience. She’d never have anything the Centre couldn’t take. "Fuck off, Jarod." She let both her exhaustion-- emotional rather than physical-- and her anger-- at him and at the universe-- into the words.

"That's not no."

It wasn't. She shrugged. "It's not yes, either." She met his eyes and tried to tell whether or not he understood the dangers of what he hadn't quite asked. She shook her head. "I still have people who can't hide, can't run."

"I know. I'd just…” The pain on his face, just for a moment, was definitely real. “Once in a while--"

"It could almost be real," she finished. She pressed her hand into the olive green of the bedspread and studied the spaces between her fingers. "Something should be real," she said at last.

"Is it easier if I don't ask?" He didn't so much as glance at the gun, but she understood. He would let her be the one sinned against. If she wanted to be.

Jarod really was an idiot.

She considered it for a moment then smiled. "Next time." She stood and closed the distance between them.

He stood to meet her.

The gun stayed where it was. 

The next day, after Jarod left, she found the bullets, all of them, in the bedside drawer with the Gideon Bible.


End file.
